What is recorded here
Indicated is a stone-walled enclosure at Moyne Franciscan friary in County Mayo, Ireland. It marked the boundary of a working monastic landscape, with orchard, pasture and later agricultural activity around the friary. The wall and buried lines still suggest that the place was shaped, owned and remembered through everyday use.
At Moyne Franciscan friary (MA022-024001-).
Documentary sources detailed in Gwynn and Hadcock (1970, 255) record that the friary had an orchard, and four acres of pasture surrounded by a stone wall. The outline of a rectilinear monastic precinct can still be seen enclosing the friary buildings, defined by a stone wall at S and E, and at N by a low, grassed-over wall remnants. A geophysical survey conducted in 2015 cast light on more complex land use (Dowling 2015). An E-W band (Wth c. 3m) of positive magnetic gradient to the N of the friary, close to the townland boundary between Abbeylands and Moyne, was interpreted as evidence of ‘a substantial in-filled ditch’ which ‘may comprise an early land division associated with the abbey.’ There was evidence of a trackway c. 100m E of the friary, consisting of two parallel ditches, 4m apart, on an NW−SE axis. The trackway appeared to overlie the imprint of cultivation ridges, spaced c. 3-4m apart, probably medieval or early post-medieval in date. Two other episodes of plough cultivation were noted in this area to SE of the friary precinct wall. A number of other discrete linear features to S of the friary may also be related to agricultural activity, such as drainage ditches (Dowling 2015, 7-8).
Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy
Date of upload: 15 June 2020
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- What survives
- Recorded monument
Places near here
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